How to flash firmware under Linux in practice?

Well, I am feeling too old for jumping through several burning hoops to upgrade several firmwares via the usual vendor-specific way: Download some DOS tools, waste some time creating a (Free-)DOS boot medium and wasting more time to make the BIOS actually boot from that and finally flash the firmware upgrade. This is so 1980-ies. I come across some linux flash tool from the Coreboot project . It seems to support various FLASH-chips. But how does it work in practice? I guess there are some pitfalls converting vendor supplied firmware upgrades into the right format. Or what about indentifying the right destination chip? Currently I probably have to upgrade for example: * the firmware of some Seagate 1.5 TB disks * the firmware of an old Abit Athlon 64 board (Award bios) * Bios/Embedded-Controller-Bios of a Thinkpad How do you upgrade your devices firmware at a Linux system?